Dems lose big in statehouses, too

Tuesday’s Republican midterm wave also rippled across the nation’s state governments, with the GOP grabbing three governorships and majorities in at least 10 new legislative chambers – further tightening their grip on the levers of power at the state level.

Republicans will hold 31 of the country’s 50 governorships next year – perhaps 32, if late-counted ballots push Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell ahead of his independent challenger, Bill Walker. They will also hold between 67 and 69 of the 98 partisan state legislative chambers – more than at any point in history, according to the Republican State Leadership Committee.

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With Washington paralyzed in many cases, it is state governments that have been major centers of policy-making. Even the implementation 2010 health care law, which Republicans decry as federal overreach, has largely been determined at the state level, where states controlled by Democrats mostly created state health care exchanges and accepted federal dollars to expand their Medicaid programs – and states controlled by Republicans mostly did not.

GOP victory also begets GOP victory. Republican gains in 2010 – which came a month before the decennial reapportionment process – put the party in charge of redrawing the congressional and legislative maps in many of these states. That’s allowed Republicans to lock in many of their gains over the subsequent two elections and created historic GOP majorities in the U.S. House and many state legislatures.

Many of Tuesday’s gains were in traditional Democratic territory. Republicans won governorships in Arkansas, which they’ve held for just 16 years since Reconstruction; President Barack Obama’s home state of Illinois; and Maryland, which they’ve held for just one term since former Gov. Spiro Agnew’s elevation to vice president in 1968.

At the state legislative level, the GOP wrested control of at least 10 chambers in which Democrats had outnumbered Republicans. They won the Minnesota state House, despite a number of successful Democratic reelection campaigns there – Sen. Al Franken, Gov. Mark Dayton and Reps. Collin Peterson and Rick Nolan all won.

Republicans captured the Maine state Senate, as vulnerable GOP Gov. Paul LePage won reelection. New Mexico’s popular Republican governor, Susana Martinez, cruised to victory, and her coattails brought the Democratic-controlled state House along with her for the first time since the early 1950s.

Nevada Democrats’ failure to recruit a candidate against Gov. Brian Sandoval, and Republicans swept, winning control of both houses of the state legislature, every statewide race (including for attorney general, which underdog Adam Laxalt won) and the U.S. House seat of freshman Democratic Rep. Steven Horsford.

“There was not a lot at the top of the ticket that was driving Democratic voters” in Nevada and New Mexico, said Kurt Fritts, national political director at the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, “so that offered up a tough landscape for legislative candidates.”

In West Virginia, Republicans forced a 17-17 tie in the state Senate — which had been governed by a 24-10 Democratic majority – meaning a party switch from one Democrat will seemingly allow the GOP to control the entire legislature for the first time since the Great Depression. The GOP also seized control of the state House. The outcome surprised even national Republicans, who viewed the West Virginia Senate as more likely to flip in 2016.